Caitlain: An area of forest equal to 20 football or rugby fields is lost every minute. Today 500,000 hectors vanish in a single week.Deforestation is causing a loss of biological diversity on an unprecedented scale. Although tropical forests cover only six percent of Earth's land surface, they happen to contain between 70% and 90% of all of the world's species. As a result of deforestation, we are losing between 50 and 100 animal and plant species each day. Inevitably, the loss of species entails a loss of genetic resources. Many of these species now facing the possibility of extinction are of enormous potential to humans in many areas; especially medicine. As of 1991, over 25% of the world's pharmaceutical products were derived from tropical plants. By contributing to the extinction of multiple species of plants and animals, we might be destroying the cures for many of the diseases that plague the human race today. Trees are natural consumers of carbon dioxide—one of the greenhouse gases whose buildup in the atmosphere contributes to global warming. Destruction of trees not only removes these “carbon sinks,” but tree burning and decomposition pump into the atmosphere even more carbon dioxide, along with methane, another major greenhouse gas.
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